Disclaimer: The Harry Potter universe belongs to JK Rowling

Unexpected Truths

Chapter Four

Weren't it for the fact he was still standing and his eyes were furiously blinking, Harry's state of mind would have been the same as after being hit by a stunner, that is to say, a blank slate with no thought capability to speak of. A quick sweep of the room would reveal almost identical conditions applied to at least Professors McGonagall, Lupin, auror Tonks and Madam Pomfrey. As it was, Harry needed nearly a minute to regain the use of his body and when that happened he began gearing up for an anger explosion the like of which nobody ever had the misfortune of witnessing.

It was just not meant to be, because just seconds before he let loose, Moody opened his mouth to add another insult to what he had already received "Potter, we don't care if you do not agree with us and are angry at the situation. Know that we will not try to rescue the girl and will not let you set a foot outside of this house for any reason whatsoever. You will forget about her in time."

Without even opening his mouth once, Harry stormed out of the room and up the stairs.

'And these are the supposed defenders of the wizarding world? No wonder we are so screwed, if these are the "Light" I don't want to know the real "Darkness"! They seem to have no qualms in using people for their benefit, and don't give a damn about their little tools being broken or lost in the process. And if that was not enough, they also remind you at every step that you are not good enough to be associated with them! Why do we even fight? With attitudes like these it's like we have already lost! It doesn't matter if we somehow manage to kill that bastard of Voldemort, someone else would always come forward to try and claim what he thinks is his rightful prerogative!' Harry's thoughts during his flight to the master bedroom were starting to depress him, and if he wanted to be able to help Hermione he could not let that continue.

'I don't care what Moody wants, I'll rescue Hermione if I have to go to Hell and back alone and on my knees, and the Order of the Phoenix be damned!' Harry's righteous anger was still running high, but was rapidly fading in light of what he had to do.

Meanwhile, Professor McGonagall was trying to talk to the three Weasleys about what they just revealed, but was not having a lot of success: they simply ignored her and retired in one of the rooms upstairs; as a way to ensure nobody bothered them, they even put some locking and privacy charms up, so the others simply let them alone after just a few minutes.

Inside the master bedroom, Harry was already thinking long and hard about what he needed to do to overcome all the obstacles on the path of his chosen mission. There were not many options for what he wanted, almost none in fact, but he realized that, as dangerous and difficult to execute the idea he had been thinking over the last few minute was, he would have only one shot at it. That being the case, he could not go about it in his usual way, following gut instincts and hoping his good luck held. He had to do it the Hermione way, thinking things through, starting from the little information he had and building a plan that would take into account every single problem that could arise and include all the contingencies he could think of.

He was not accustomed to this way of doing things and at first was nearly overwhelmed by the sheer number of details he had to address, but there really was one response to that feeling. 'For Hermione, I'll pull this through; she always manages to deliver a working plan no matter the pressure, the time constraints or the difficulty of the situation. For her I can do no less.' Soldiering on, he resumed his planning.

'OK, Harry, first of all you need to calm down, or you'll end up on a wild goose search with no hope to be successful' and with that mental lecture to himself, he began to take deep breaths and do a little bit of meditation, thanking Hermione once again for teaching him how to do that for their experiments with the mind link. After slipping gradually into the meditative state, one of the first things he realized was that he had no information at all on where to look for her: whatever method of travel the Death Eaters had used, it was most likely of the untraceable variety. However, his thinking of their mind link practice sessions gave him a possible answer on how to locate her, the main problem being the limited range they were able to reach... but that was essentially a direct consequence of how much energy they could pour into the link. Even if Harry had never reached his limit, not by a long shot, Hermione had always insisted on trying to balance their power expenditure; in essence she had been the one limiting the range as she was not as powerful as Harry. In this case he felt that he could reach a lot farther if he used his maximum potential and that gave him hope that this method of locating her would be successful. It was the only thing he could use anyway.

'So, provided I can locate her, then I have to get to her; that in itself is a complex problem: I have to overcome the wards here at headquarters, apparate near her over a possibly long distance, punch through any wards that no doubt surround whatever location she is being kept at AND THEN do it all again for the return trip. OK, let's see what could help me... the wards here are ancient and powerful and there is the Fidelius charm to consider... Hey, Just a sec!' suddenly something he had nearly forgot (and that he really hoped the order HAD forgot, at this point) came back to him: '...since Sirius died, I OWN this place! Even if I'm not a Black by blood, the wards should have aligned with me at least partially! This should make getting out of here easier; it would still need a lot of power, but surely less than it would otherwise!'

A new side problem also presented itself, 'I also have to keep the Order from interfering with me during the execution of the plan. With the amount of energy I'll likely have to employ, they would feel it immediately and be here to stop me even faster... I could use the locking and privacy charms, but in their everyday form those would never be able to withstand an attack for too long, certainly not as long as I would need; again this seems another problem solvable only if I have enough energy to spend on it.' A mirthless laugh escaped his mouth 'And to think that all of this was just to be able to work in relative peace to try and locate Hermione and to get out of the house undisturbed! I'm beginning to understands why she feels always so nervous about my usual approach to adventures: the planning that needs to be done before hand is enormous!' His appreciation for Hermione's mind and organizational abilities would grow a lot in the next few minutes.
'I also have to consider the possibility (or should that be certainty?) of encountering resistance at the enemy hideout... but at least on the return trip we do not need to go through the wards here: we can just land in the alley behind the house and walk the rest of the way'.

It was almost too much, but he was not a Gryffindor for nothing, and there was no way he would give up before he even tried. At the end of his "analysis" session (it was still too vague to be called a plan), he reached the conclusion that it all boiled down to having enough energy to do everything he needed to do.

Again, his experiments with Hermione gave him an idea: if he could mentally reach Hermione, he would be able to locate her much more easily, since she would then work with him actively and not be simply a passive element in the process. Two problems where still present with this line of reasoning: Hermione did not have the same amount of raw power he had, so she could not lower the energy requirements by that much (and even then it would still leave her exhausted) and the amount of energy needed would still be staggering. He could not do anything about the first problem, but the second could be overcome, at the cost of taking a big risk when doing it and getting a nasty tongue leashing later from Hermione (tough, if he was really truthful about it, he would be more than happy to actually GET that scolding - if Hermione WAS the one to deliver it once this crisis was over: that she would have the opportunity would have been the most wonderful reward in the world for him).

During their experiments, Harry and Hermione had determined that they could reach each other over greater distances if they put more power in the link, but had always tried to keep the energy expenditure even between the two of them, effectively limiting the range of communication to what Hermione could achieve. But Harry could give a lot more due to his magical core's capability to produce and handle larger quantities of power, even if the more he used, the more it became chaotic and difficult to control.

At the moment, however, he had more at his disposal to do the job than he would normally have: the anger he still felt before (toward the Death Eaters and Voldemort and toward the Weasleys - he could understand the Order's stance on the matter even if he did not like it at all, but the Weasleys were simply inexcusable), and the concern about Hermione's safety were being channeled as mental energies to help him think straight; those same feeling, smoldering under the surface, were also causing a lot of adrenaline to be pumped in his bloodstream, giving him the physical endurance to keep himself on track to achieve the long list of intermediate steps to his final goal: free Hermione and take her home safe and sound.

Hermione lay unconscious on the floor of the small cell they put her in. At the moment she could not feel much, but during a brief spell of awareness about a hour earlier she had determined her situation to be quite bleak: physically, she was not too badly wounded, just a couple of broken ribs and a few bruises, but she was exhausted and of course they had taken her wand. On the plus side, it seemed they hadn't done anything to her... yet. She did not know why, but for now it was a good thing. On the other hand, she was still held in a cell by a band of mad, sadistic murderers, with no way of contacting her friends or the Order. If that was not bad enough, she still had to add the fact she was a muggle born while her captors preached the most orthodox views about blood purity, and that she was one of the closest friends of Harry Potter, Voldemort's sworn enemy. All in all, not a very good combination, and even with all her cleverness she could not think about any outcome of this situation that could be considered positive at the moment. The only thing that crossed her mind before her body slumped into unconsciousness again, mercifully erasing her current train of thought was 'Harry...'

His analysis of the situation complete, Harry set out to begin in earnest: almost two hours had passed since the kidnapping, and he did not know how much time Hermione would still have before something... he did not even want to complete the thought.

So, first of all, to ensure no one would disturb him. Lacking the knowledge to use anything more advanced, he cast the normal locking charms on the entire room, but with about five times more power than usual: a pretty noticeable difference, but he hoped the Order would pass it off as a result of his current mind state and not dwell on it too much. Even at this level the charms would not be up to too much beating if someone really wanted to enter, but would ensure at least a window of 10 minutes to be undisturbed, and besides he could always strengthen them later, if needed.

Then, he began gathering energy to power the mind link: slowly, he started his mental probe in all directions, not knowing where she was in respect to him. The range of the probe increased at a steady but controlled pace, until it reached the maximum he ever did with Hermione. Pausing briefly to focus his mental control better, he pushed forward and expanded the radius of his probe. The area covered by his scan increased quadratically with the range and not linearly of course, thus forcing him to take his time while trying to feel for Hermione's presence, but fortunately, he was in London, so he reached the east and south coasts of Great Britain relatively quickly; being mindful of sweeping in the directions he remembered the little British islands were before retreating his probe, he started focusing his efforts to the west and north. Already he was covering more ground than he ever did but was aware that he was losing some of the accuracy needed to recognize Hermione's specific "presence" and was forced to slow down some more.

The time elapsed since he began his search was easily three times what he had hoped he would get with the privacy charms, but it seemed that the Order members at headquarters still thought he was simply blowing off steam at his forced impotence about the situation. As far as he was concerned, that was really fine. Suddenly, after about 45 minutes, something familiar entered his field of perception, in direction North-Northwest from a distance (that he could estimate) of about 150 miles. The feeling was not exactly what he was used from Hermione at a much closer range, but was really an almost exact match. Debating briefly if he could risk pulling the wide area probe in favor a of a narrow "beam-shaped" one, he decided to pour his every sense on that spot to try and get a better feel of it. Once he did so, he could tell that the mind he felt was really Hermione's, and that was a great relief for his worried self, but her presence still was not the same as it should be.

Following his carefully crafted plan (for him, anyway), he tried to contact her. Initially she did not respond, but after he sent a couple of small energy bursts her way, she sluggishly acknowledged his presence; now having the two-way connection open, he could understand why her signal was off: she was probably unconscious and only her subconscious was answering Harry's familiar presence. Nevertheless he could now feel her, so he set about gathering enough energy for all the steps he still had to do to accomplish his mission, but not before allowing himself to whisper 'Hermione...'